Sergei Eisenstein Filmography

Born:: January 23, 1898 in Riga, Latvia
Occupation:: Director, Producer, Screenwriter
Birth name:: Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein
Biography:: The father of montage, Russia's Sergei Eisenstein was one of the principal architects of the modern cinematic form. Despite a relatively small ouevre of only seven completed films, most if not all of which suffered under the weight of communist intrusion, few individuals were more instrumental in...Read More

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The Secret Life of Sergei Eisenstein

Synopsis: Few secrets are revealed in the Italian feature-length documentary The Secret Life of Sergei Eisenstein. Save for the revelation of the famed Russian filmmaker's private notes and sketches, there's little here that hasn't been covered elsewhere. Still, filmmaker Giancarlo Bertelli (normally a Read More

1985
Eisenstein

1958
Ivan the Terrible: Part 2

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Nikolai Cherkasov, Serafima Birman, Pavel Kadochnikov, Mikhail A. Kuznetsov, Mikhail Zharov, Andrei Abrikosov, Amvrosiy Buchma

Synopsis: The second part of Sergei Eisenstein's baroque chronicle of the legendary Russian czar was originally planned as a three-part epic. But Eisenstein had battles with Russian censors over the second part of his trilogy, ostensibly because of a negative depiction of Ivan's secret police force (Stalin Read More

1946
Ivan the Terrible, Part 1

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Nikolai Cherkasov, Lyudmila Tselikovskaya, Seraphima Birman, Pyotr Kadochnikov

Synopsis: Sergei Eisenstein's operatic saga of the 16th-century Russian hero Czar Ivan IV is given a charismatic performance by Nikolai Cherkasov and a brilliant score by Sergei Prokofiev. Part One deals with Czar Ivan's beginnings as the ruler of Russia, Ivan's coronation, and his marriage to Anastasia Read More

1944
Seeds of Freedom

Crew: Screen Story

Actors: Henry Hull, Aline MacMahon, A. Antonov, Martin Wolfson

Synopsis: This unique wartime propaganda drama is a film within a film; one of those films is Russian-director Sergei Eisenstein's silent masterpiece Potemkin. The other film provides a loose framework for the other and represents a Russian freedom fighter's attempts to inspire his dispirited, flagging Read More

1943
Time In The Sun

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In 1931, famed Soviet filmmaker Sergei M. Eisenstein travelled to the Western Hemisphere to make his first non-Russian film, Que Viva Mexico, a project financed by muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair. The project withered and died when Sinclair became impatient with Eisenstein's meticulous shooting Read More

1940
Alexander Nevsky

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Nikolai Cherkasov, Nikolai Okhlopkov, Andrei Abrikosov, Dmitri N. Orlov, V.K. Novikov

Synopsis: Like many of Eisenstein's best films, Alexander Nevsky was conceived as a morale-booster, aimed at stirring up Russian patriotism. It is set in the 13th century, but the villainous Teutonic Knights are obviously meant to represent the burgeoning threat of Hitler's hordes. With Russia besieged by Read More

1938
Bezhin Lug

Crew: Director

Actors: Vitya Kartashov, Boris Zakhava, Nikolai Khmelev, Vasiliy Orlov, Petr Arzhanov

Synopsis: Eisenstein worked on Bezhin Meadow from 1935 to 1937. Based on a Turgenev story, the scenario for Bezhin Meadow was written by Isaac Babel. It's a tale that dramatizes the forcible reorganization of peasant settlements into state affiliated collective farms soon after the formation of the Soviet Read More

1935
Qué Viva México

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: After the dissolution of his project based on the Theodore Dreiser novel An American Tragedy and nearing the conclusion of his failed sojourn in Hollywood, legendary Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein secured financing for this documentary about Mexico from avowed Socialist Upton Sinclair. Eisenstein Read More

1932
Romance Sentimentale

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Some accounts claim that Eisenstein only attached his name to this sound short simply because he needed the money. It is, however, closer to the truth to say that this was a collaboration, although the exact extent of the collaboration between him and Grigori Alexandrov remains undetermined. The Read More

1930
Generalnaya Liniya

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's The General Line (Generalnaia linia) began life in 1927 as a celebration of the collectivization of agriculture, as championed by old-line Bolshevik Leon Trotsky. Hoping to reach a wide audience, the director forsook his usual practice of emphasizing groups by Read More

1929
Frauennot - Frauenglück

Crew: Director

1929
Staroe I Novoe

Crew: Director

Actors: Marfa Lapkina, M. Ivanin, V. Buzenkov, Nezhnikov, Chukhmarev

1929
October

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Vasiliy Nikandrov, N. Popov, Boris Livanov, Eduard Tisse

Synopsis: Borrowing its title from a book by American journalist John Reed (of Reds fame), Sergei Eisenstein's Ten Days That Shook the World reenacts the crucial week-and-a-half in October, 1918, when the Russian Kerensky regime was toppled by the Bolsheviks. While Eisenstein takes certain liberties in Read More

1927
Battleship Potemkin

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Alexander Antonov, Vladimir Barsky, Grigory Alexandrov, Mikhail Gomorov, Marusov

Synopsis: After the success of Strike (1924), Sergei Eisenstein was commissioned by the Soviet government to make a film commemorating the uprising of 1905. Eisenstein's scenario, boiled down from what was to have been a multipart epic of the occasion, focussed on the crew of the battleship Potemkin. Read More

1925
Strike

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ivan Klyukvin, Alexander Antonov, Grigory Alexandrov, Mikhail Gomorov, Maxim Shtraukh

Synopsis: The first full-length feature project of pantheon Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, Strike is a government-commissioned celebration of the unrealized 1905 Bolshevik revolution. The story is set in motion by a series of outrages and humiliations perpetrated on the workers of a metalworks plant. Read More

1924